


over that bed the moon shines bright

by elwing_alcyone



Category: Pocket Mirror (Video Game)
Genre: Christmas, Christmas Tree, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Everyone Is Alive, Gen, Religious Imagery & Symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-17
Updated: 2017-12-17
Packaged: 2019-02-15 18:59:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13037412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elwing_alcyone/pseuds/elwing_alcyone
Summary: Lisette expects to be alone on Christmas. Goldia proves her wrong.





	over that bed the moon shines bright

**Author's Note:**

  * For [syrupwit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/syrupwit/gifts).



> Thanks to my beta, R, and to my recip for giving such wonderful prompts! And especially for permission to write the vaguely-defined AU where they're all neighbours and possibly witches, which I never knew I wanted until I saw your letter and my heart said "YES." Happy Yuletide!

All of Lisette's flowers had died in the frost. There was nothing to come out here for, in such bitter weather, but she came anyway, to sit on her peaceful hilltop, away from all the other pieces of herself. Snow had fallen, and now the sky was clear, bright with stars. Out here the silence was almost as fierce as the cold. None of the sounds from the city reached her.

Harpae had come that afternoon, precisely at three o'clock, carrying a tea tray. Lisette hadn't answered her nervous calls. She'd stayed in the shadows, in her maze. She knew Harpae wouldn't come looking for her there, and of course she was right. Finally, receiving no answer but the furtive scrape of metal on glass, the distant sounds of doors creaking open and banging shut, Harpae had gone.

She'd left the tea tray behind. Lisette might have been reading too much into it, to take that as a subtle reproach, but she didn't think so. A pot of cooling rose tea, and tiny, perfectly formed little cakes, which also smelled of roses. The teapot was pink and gold. It couldn't have looked more out of place. Had Harpae stepped daintily over the dark puddles on the floor? Skirted the dangling cobwebs? Had she wrinkled her nose in distaste as, determinedly unseeing, she moved aside broken crockery and drifts of crumpled paper to make room for her little overture of friendship? Of course she had.

Lisette had left it all untouched. She wasn't going to be the object of Harpae's pious good deed.

She came out into the graveyard instead. The winter night was cold and still as glass, a perfect reflection that didn't change as she looked at it. In the distance, the lights of Vienna shone gold, and the stars were silver. All the buildings looked like ice statues, and she imagined them all melting away when the sun came out, leaving her alone. The thought stung like cold, bitterly pleasing.

As she sat there, the night advancing, one sound did reach her. The church bells began to ring the call to worship. After that, even fainter, she could hear the choir singing. The carols came high and pure and otherworldly as the moonlight.

She had tried to make herself a church once. She'd thought she would fill it with flowers, and let her other selves be the congregation. But like everything else she tried to make it had become unclean in her hands. The altar had been a coffin, the tapestries funeral pall, the flowers drowning in blood. The idea of holy martyrdom would always have sharp edges, for her.

Her cold hands worked into fists, but she opened them again, little by little. Her resentment blew out in a cloud of frosty white, and dissipated.

People would be decorating their Christmas trees now. She remembered a time before the curse had separated them, when she and the others had all been together, so when their parents had called them into the ballroom to see, Fleta's speechless delight had been hers, and the catch of tears in Harpae's throat, and Goldia's wonder. She could still remember the light glinting on mysterious points of silver and gold between the tree's dark branches, like a glimpse of a village hidden in the forest, and knew they had felt her stirring of superstitious fear mingling with their joy, souring it. She had moved in them like a shadow even then.

Harpae would have given up Christmas trees, or if she had one, it would be the only shining thing in a dark house. Fleta's would be covered in gingerbread and oranges, assuming she hadn't just eaten them already. Maybe Harpae would play Christkind and bring presents, as she'd brought the afternoon tea tray for Lisette. That would suit her.

And all the while Lisette would be here in the dark, the lone figure standing in the mud and dirt after the circus tent had passed. That was what they'd left her. But they hadn't known about her graveyard, her sacred place hidden on the far side of the maze; they hadn't known that even she could find something uplifting, if she was willing to brave the cold.

In time the singing ended, and the bells rang out again. If Lisette closed her eyes, she could imagine herself there. She could smell incense and pine needles, spices and wine. The bells rang midnight - midnight on Christmas Eve, the first minutes of Christmas day. Then the silence came back like an old ache.

She was frozen to the bone by then, her hands and feet and face all numb. All the others fell back as she came inside. She chilled them just as the night air had chilled her. She could feel the cold rolling off her like white mist.

"The traitor is here," someone whispered from behind a mirror.

"The traitor's come," one of the others said, from around a corner.

Lisette stopped. "Her? What does she want?"

But they didn't answer. A shiver of laughter ran around the maze. One of them came crawling, scissors in her hand, ready to make a move against the betrayer, but Lisette sent her away again with a look. Sometimes she had to struggle to make them stay put in their mirrors, but tonight she felt almost clean, almost whole, as if loneliness were the only thing she had to be sad about.

The light reached her first. It started as a golden glimmer where all should have been eerie green. The glimmer became a glow as she followed it from mirror to mirror. As she neared the edge of the maze she was conscious that she was moving more quietly, so no one would hear her approach; she wanted to see before she was seen.

Goldia was there in the wreckage that Harpae might have called the parlour, moving between twisted cages and broken chairs, stepping over bundles of wet cloth so she could put candles in every corner of the room. Lisette found it hard to imagine she thought she was doing good here, making more light to shine on the squalor and misery, but then she saw the tree. It was only half decorated, but the candlelight caught on the ornaments and made them shine. It was like coming out of a winter wood after a long journey, and finding a hall lit up and warm and ready to welcome her. She shivered.

Perhaps she made a sound, or perhaps Goldia only sensed her movement; either way, she turned, and her face lit up. "You're here! I'm so sorry I'm late! But you came out to see me anyway. Thank you, Lisette."

"What are you doing here?" Lisette said flatly. She could feel her other selves listening, stirring around and listening. If one of them had hurt Goldia... if Lisette let her own resentment take hold...

"I wanted to surprise you. Did I?"

Lisette didn't answer. She was still waiting for the trap, the wish granted then withdrawn. Whatever Goldia was doing, it seemed to be having some effect; the puddles were shrinking, the discolouration in walls and cloth lessening, but Lisette didn't trust it.

"I brought cookies too," Goldia said, going back to her candles. She seemed to have made it her mission to fit a hundred of them into the room. "I never got to make them before, so they look a bit, um. Irregular. But they taste good!" She crouched in front of the hearth, which had been dead and cold for as long as Lisette had been here, laid some crumpled papers as kindling and managed to coax an uncertain spark into them.

"Why are you doing this?"

"Because it's Christmas, and I wanted to spend it with you."

"This isn't..." She struggled. "This isn't a good place to be."

"But you're here."

"All the more reason."

"Shh. Have a cookie."

Lisette picked one up, a wonky crescent dusted with sugar like frost. She didn't think she could have swallowed, so she put it back and sucked the sugar from her fingers. No trace of rose, only sweetness.

Goldia's hands were full of crystal ornaments as she went back to the tree. Gold and glass, like the mirror Lisette had tried so hard to shatter. She wondered if she could just touch one, without it breaking.

"I was trying to think of a present to give you," Goldia said. "Then I remembered the Christmas trees mother and father used to make on Christmas Eve. They put up all kinds of decorations for the Christmas ball, but they always let us in to see, before any of the guests arrived."

It had been a lie. Putting up something pretty to distract the unhappy children for a while, expecting them to be satisfied with candy and crystal and never notice what was wrong.

Maybe this was just a distraction, too. Maybe it was nothing better than Harpae's attempt at peacemaking. Sometimes Lisette believed in Goldia's sincerity, but other times the voices from the mirrors told her not to be so stupid, and it was hard not to listen to so many echoes of her own darkest thoughts.

"My flowers all died," she said. Even saying it helped a little, knowing that Goldia would know which ones she meant. Goldia had fought through the maze to find her. That had to count for something.

"Oh," Goldia said sadly. "They never had a winter before, did they? But we can grow them back." She tied another bow onto the tree, and pointed to the table where Harpae's tray still sat ignored. "Does that help?"

There on the table, like a magic trick, a spray of spring blossoms in a vase. It called to mind another old story from childhood, images of a girl locked in a dark cell, watering a withered branch until it flowered again.

"It's good luck if they bloom by Christmas Eve," Goldia said. She smiled hopefully. "I picked white ones, not pink. I know you don't like pink."

"Thank you." They were so white, she was half afraid the darkness here would stain them.

"I'm finished!" Goldia said, straightening one silver bauble on the tree. "Now you have to go out and come in again, and act surprised."

"Can't I just sit and look at it?"

"Yes, you can do that too. Can I sit with you?"

It was nice that she was asking, even though there was no need. The fire was burning properly now; the room was almost warm, and when Goldia sat beside her, that was warmer still. She smelled of baking, sugar and vanilla, and the pure clean scent of melting snow. The crackling of the logs drowned out the silence from the maze. When Lisette looked at the tree through half-closed eyes, she saw Vienna in the distance, with a star shining over it as bright as the moon. Now the cold was seeping out of her, she felt drowsy. It was new to feel that - a contented sort of weariness, not just exhaustion at the end of too much pain.

"You have to go soon," she said.

Goldia stirred and sighed. "I'm going to visit the others too, later on," she admitted. "But I can stay here a while. If you want me to stay."

"Yes." It always took her longer to find words that were kind, not angry or bitter, but Goldia never minded her long silences. "I'm glad you came."

"I'm glad you're glad!" Goldia said, and giggled. "You can always come too."

Sit down with Fleta and Harpae for one tea party after another, join the angel-reflection for whatever jumbled version of Christmas she was about to have painstakingly explained to her? No doubt Goldia loved the idea of them all as one big family, but Lisette wasn't convinced.

When she stayed silent, Goldia reached for the plate of crescent cookies, took one for herself and one for Lisette. This time Lisette ate hers, keeping her eyes on the shining tree, and her branch of blossoms. Her mouth cramped on the sweetness. Goldia beside her seemed too bright to look at directly, like the moon high in the winter sky when the cold brings tears to your eyes.

"I can't go. Not yet."

"I understand, Lisette, you don't have to - "

"But if you stay," she said, "I'll take you to the graveyard when it's morning. You can hear all the bells ring."

It was a stupid thing to offer, a place of the dead and a field of frost-blackened flowers, a view of a city too far away to touch. But Goldia beamed as if she'd been waiting for nothing else. "You'd really let me? I'd love that."

She wondered how Goldia could sit here so comfortably, with the mirrors at her back, the reflections all gathered out of sight. She wondered then how she could sit here beside Goldia without her skin shrinking from painful associations. Perhaps they were both changing after all.

They weren't like that saint in the story, coaxing life from dry twigs. But Goldia wasn't like other people, either, and neither was Lisette. They could change themselves, and the world around them. Perhaps by morning, the flowers in the graveyard would all be coming back to life.


End file.
